Tamar’s birthday was a few weeks ago. Because his birthday is so close after the Christmas and New Year celebrations, we don’t always know if we feel like celebrating with even more food and drinks. So I waited ’til pretty much last minute until deciding I was up for organising a party… but in the end I did decide to invite some friends and family over. I didn’t bother to ask for a RSVP, so I ended up having no idea who exactly would come and who would stay for dinner. Our family all come from other parts of the country (if not from abroad), so if they come, they always stay for dinner. And then most often, our friends stick around as well. I must say I do love our house full of people and the crazy situation that exists when a lot of people have to be accommodated in our living space — finding places to seat everyone, finding plates, cutlery, napkins, glasses. In the end, we had 28 people stay for dinner that evening!

Finding the right menu, flexible enough to be shared with more or with less people, requires a bit of thought and planning beforehand. In summer, things are a easier — when we entertain for bigger groups (for birthdays or just because we feel like it), we just get a bunch of good sausages for on the barbecue, make some tasty salads and serve everything with yummy bread. The children find a place to have a picnic on the lawn while the adults hang out on the terrace. Easy.

Winter is a more tricky time of year for entertaining. You have to sit down properly when you’re eating! A favourite dish I make for these sort of occasions is (my version of) minestrone soup. It’s something I can prepare beforehand, is loved by children as well as adults, and a little can go a long way (adding a bit of water to the soup when more people tend to stay definitely does the trick). We also have served hot dogs on crispy buns before (we made home-made sauerkraut that year, which was a hit!) — an easy one, because it’s food you don’t necessarily have to sit down for.

This year, we tried something different, a more traditional style, wintery dinner. We made a big roasting dish of meat-loaf, an oven tray full of hasselback potatoes, green beans and a salad. It was easy to prepare beforehand, perfect to share with it-doesn’t-matter-how-many-people, and seriously delicious.

Here’s the how-to:

For the meat-loaf, we mixed:

2 kilo of ground beef

500 grams of ground pork

2 large onions, grated

8 large cloves of garlic, grated

1 chili pepper, grated

1 large courgette, grated

2 large carrots, grated

5 eggs

150 g grated cheese

1/2 tin pureed tomatoes

salt and pepper

We put the mix in a roasting tin in the oven (350°F/175°C) for about half an hour. Then, we let it cool down a bit and poured the cooking juices that had assembled inside the roasting tin into a saucepan, which we mixed to taste with some ketchup, worchestershiresauce and mustard. We set this aside.

For the hasselback potatoes, we used 25 nicely sized firm potatoes. We sliced them thinly but not entirely through, leaving them together at the bottom (we placed two thin pieces of wood on either side of the potato while slicing it to help — wooden spoons work well too). When done, we brushed a mixture of melted butter and olive oil (about 100 g butter and half a cup of olive oil) over the potatoes and into the slices, and sprinkled them with maldon salt. We also pre-baked these for about half an hour on 200°C.

Pim and Ava kindly cleaned the green beans for us — we washed them and set them aside, together with a large chopped onion in a bowl.

We prepared the vinaigrette for the salad (which I made with mâche salad, very thinly sliced red beets, slices of orange and some roasted pumpkin and sunflower seeds — I prepared this as well).

When our guests started to arrive, all of this was prepared, so we could focus on handing out tea and coffee and cake — we made carrot cake, pumpkin pie, brownies and sand cookies dipped in chocolate. When we were ready for wine, we served crunchy bread with smoked mackerel paté, homemade cheese biscuits and grissini with a horseradish dip. At the end of the afternoon, to prepare for the dinner, Tamar and I finished the meat loaf and potatoes by putting them back in a hot oven (200°C) for half an hour, finishing each of them under the grill for a few minutes. (Because I like the look of it, I put some bay leaves randomly between the slices of the potatoes, but this is not really necessary. Looks pretty though.)

I sautéed the diced onion in butter, added the green beans with some salt and pepper and a small glass of water and let them simmer for around 10 minutes until they started to soften. We prepared the salad by putting the ingredients together in a bowl.

Meanwhile, our guests set up the spare table and looked for chairs all over the house, and set the tables. We served the meatloaf in slices and with the gravy on the side. The potatoes were halved for the children and big dishes with the beans and the salad were going round the tables – it was delicious, and so fun to serve such a proper meal to such a big group! Quantities ended up being perfect — there were only a few slices of meatloaf and potatoes left.

Comments (7)

anything slow cooker! greek broadbeans in tomato sauce with fresh bread and greek salad is a favourite but in the past we also made pulled pork or indonesian beef… And of course your tomato and mustard tarte!

What a delicious sounding meal! And you’ve inspired me to try making hasselback potatoes. When I was younger, we would regularly have large parties with 30+ guests, particularly in the summer when we would have large meals outside in our garden. My mother’s go to meals were a jamacian jerk chicken where she could prepare a marinade the day before and just bake it the day of or a large tray of moussaka. Friends would often bring sides and we ended up with a delicious potluck where no meal was the same. Now that I’m married to an Italian and have learned wonderful recipes from my mother-in-law, pasta is my go-to for large groups. It’s easy to prepare a large batch of your sauce the day before and any extra can be frozen for future use! A carbonara sauce is also incredibly quick and easy, and can be prepped and cooked in the time it takes to boil water and cook the pasta. We cook about 100g/pasta per person; if we have extra unanticipated guests, we just add more pasta. In the summer, we also turn to prosciutto and melon, caprese salads, and torte salate (quiche) for large parties- all of which are fast to prep/cook and are delicious.

RELATED POSTS

Birthday season has just come to an end in our family, which consists of five birthdays in quick succession. Marlow is our odd one out with a birthday in November, but the rest of us all have birthdays in the springtime. Our birthday bunting literally goes up and down and up and down from April ...

In the Netherlands, it's a tradition to give a child a birthday crown for the day when it's his or her birthday. Typically it's a home-made, simple crown made of thick paper, decorated with some curls and colours and usually there's the number with the child's age glued on it. When the child is old ...

Sara turned nine (nine!!) a few weeks ago, so last week we organised a birthday party for her and her friends. I always ask what sort of birthday my kids would want (we've had themes like horses, knights, disco, cooking, sushi and a treasure hunt before), and this time, Sara came up with the idea of strawberries. ...

One of my childhood friends always had the best cake at her birthday parties. Her mum would make (or buy?) the most ordinary cupcakes, and set the table with different sort of custards, frostings and toppings. I loved to pile up my plate with candy, and create the most enormous cupcake possible. For Sara's birthday ...

It was Ivy' 5th birthday on Tuesday and I think (hope) the day really lived up to her expectations. She started talking about her birthday about three months ago and together we counted down the days every day for the past 60-something days! (Not sure if it's a girl thing... but she was more excited ...

Ivy turned six last week and we hosted a little party in our back garden to celebrate her big day. It's become a tradition in our family of hosting parties at home and on the actual day of the birthday rather than waiting for a weekend day to celebrate -- it's our way of keeping ...

Last weekend, Ava finally celebrated her sixth birthday party with a few friends from her class. We had decided on a flower theme, which we thought would be cute for a bunch of 6-year-olds. It ended up being a lovely sunny day, and the flower party theme was so good (and so easy!). I always like ...

We've decided to take a little blogging break this week to enjoy some time away from our computers. We are each in our favourite summer spots enjoying slow, lazy days with our families, and we hope you won't mind if we push the pause button this week and resume as normal next week? In the meantime, ...

There's something so special about a homemade birthday party. I love setting up the decorations, blowing balloons and organising party games. It always gives me such a lovely feeling of nostalgia. We just celebrated Sophie's birthday in our new home surrounded by her classmates, all 25 of them! I'm still recovering from that but I ...

Did you ever try tie-dye when you were a child? I remember doing it at primary school and loving it! So for Ava's 8th birthday party, I thought it would be fun to make Shibori style tie-dye t-shirts with the girls. I had done tie-dye before with my children years ago (look at Casper in this ...

It's all 'Ninjago' in Casper's world at the moment. So when I asked him what sort of birthday party he was thinking of, I shouldn't have been surprised when he said a 'Ninjago Party' -- and that there wasn't even an option for an alternative! I'm not the biggest fan of this Lego line myself ...